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Georgia Institute of Technology

Emory University

 

SYLLABI

ENGLISH 1101
"PAPER, PENCILS, AND PIXELS: REVOLUTIONS IN WRITING"

Georgia Institute of Technology
Fall 2003

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What does it mean to write in the "Digital Age"? Has the computer altered our fundamental approach to writing (and reading)? What happens when the phrase "putting pen to paper" no longer registers with our writing experiences? What do we lose and gain with this shift? Will we lose a proper sense of knowledge, as Sven Birkerts suggests? Will our structures of thought change through with shifts in writing, as Walter Ong claims? Can we glean, as Benjamin Franklin does, a proper moral sense from patterns of writing? Or, as Janet Murray argues, will new forms of writing allow us to alter the very process by which we tell and receive stories? By examining the work of these and other writers who grapple with similar questions, we will strive to articulate answers as we seek to understand our position in a transitional moment of writing.

At its core, this course will direct you to think critically about the process of writing, both through a philosophical exploration of the nature of writing itself as well as a careful examination of our own patterns of composition. Since this is a writing course in theme and practice, we will use our engagement with reading material to explore the process of expository writing, from the formation of a topic through final revisions of the essay. Much of our time will be devoted to your own writing and the manner in which your writing takes shape. By reading essays critically and carefully, we will discuss the various methods professional and student writers use to develop their ideas into coherent and powerful essays.

Required Texts:

Writing Material: Readings from Plato to the Digital Age. New York: Longman, 2003.
Good Reasons: Designing and Writing Effective Arguments. New York: Longman, 2003.
The Little, Brown Handbook, Brief Version. New York: Longman, 2002.

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ENGLISH 1101
EDUCATING MACHINES, EDUCATING THE NATIVE: AUTOETHNOGRAPHY AND THE CULTURE OF EDUCATION

Georgia Institute of Technology
Fall 2002

What is the purpose of formal education? Are we to learn to become better "machinery" for proper functioning of the nation, as Benjamin Rush would have it, or are we to engage critically with our education in order to establish counternarratives to a hegemonic culture? As our readings will show, people from a variety of backgrounds offer different and even divergent perspectives on this question. Throughout the semester, we will investigate the theoretical foundations of formal education, the processes involved in addressing different cultures, and the practices surrounding the "cultural" education of many American Indians during the past 125 years.

Required Texts:

Ways of Reading, ed. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky
Francis La Flesche, The Middle Five
Joseph Williams, Style: Toward Clarity and Grace
The New Century Handbook, Hult and Hucking
Various electronic texts on the web or on Electronic Reserve

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ENGLISH 1102
"THE PARADISE OF 'PROGRESS' AND THE TARTARUS OF HUMANITY: TECHNOLOGY AND INDUSTRIALISM IN EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE"

Georgia Institute of Technology
Spring 2003

"I consider it possible to convert men into republican machines. This must be done, if we expect them to perform their parts properly, in the great machine of the government of the state." This famous quote from Benjamin Rush in 1786 uses a mechanistic metaphor to define a clear vision of republican values and possibilities following the independence of the British colonies in America, while it also implicitly anticipates the rapid development of technology and its position within society during the first century of the United States. Rush and many others believed that the implementation of technology in everyday life-from transportation to production-would initiate a positive change in the life of American citizens. However, the realities of this new society complicated such an idealistic vision, as technological developments led to poverty, debased working conditions for laborers (American citizens and immigrants alike), and a forceful encroachment on the environment. Throughout the semester, we will investigate how a variety of writers, from the American Revolution to the 1880s, used their work to understand the ambiguities inherent in the increased incorporation of technology into early American society. By examining the work of such writers as Thomas Jefferson, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Rebecca Harding Davis, we will better understand how technology altered the lives and culture of people in early America.

These sections are part of a team-taught course on transatlantic industrialization taught by Drs. Ellis and Jones. Each section will study literary responses to the Industrial Revolution, with Dr. Ellis's sections focusing on the United States, and Dr. Jones's focusing on Great Britain. The course as a whole will include sections on work, slavery, agriculture, machines, domestic labor, technology, and the environment. While each section will necessarily pursue its own concerns, students will work across sections to produce a research project on transatlantic industrialization, examining and documenting the ways in which machines, ideologies, and practices crossed the Atlantic. Much of the course will take place in a MOO, a modifiable, interactive online space.

Required Texts:

Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills (Bedford/St. Martin's edition);
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court;
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Selected Tales and Sketches;
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays;
The Lowell Offering: Writings by New England Mill Women (1840-1845), ed. Benita Eisler;
Brook Hindle, Steven Lubar, Engines of Change: The American Industrial Revolution, 1790-1860;

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ENGLISH 354
AUTHORS AT WORK: VOCABULARIES OF LABOR AND LEISURE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE

Emory University
Spring 2002

Course Description : During the 19th C. the meaning of "work" changed dramatically in the United States. Technological innovations, the development of urban manufacturing centers, the proliferation and abolition of slavery, and expanding commercial enterprises forced citizens to redefine and reexamine their positions within the economy. Moreover, shifts in the style and manner of work consequently fostered a changing comprehension of "leisure," as the time away from one's work became increasingly significant. At the center of these changes was the profession of authorship, defined either as an elite and disengaged waste of time or as an acceptable form of labor teaching and educating a readership that possessed an excess of leisure time. Indeed, as we shall see, these definitions often overlapped, allowing writers, readers, and detractors alike to debate the merits of a literary profession. In this course, we will investigate how novelists such as William Wells Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Sarah Orne Jewett negotiated the terrain of such debates, both through their depictions of labor and leisure, as well as through an exploration-often masked-of the value and credibility of their own work.

Required Texts:
Charles Brockden Brown, Ormond, or The Secret Witness
Three Classic African-American Novels, ed. William Andrews
Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall and Other Stories
Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables
William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham
Louisa May Alcott, Work: A Story of Experience
Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of Pointed Firs

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ENGLISH 350
PRINT CULTURE, AUTHORITY, AND IDENTITY IN EARLY AMERICA

Emory University
Fall 2001

Course Descriptions: The United States is a country grounded in the printed word, a nation whose collective memory continues to dwell upon the significance and power of three documents over 200 years old: The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Yet an investigation into the history of this fascination with the printed word reveals both fissures and alliances, discord and agreement over the authority of print culture, the author's print community, and the public role of the author and the printed word. In this course, we will examine the development of authorship, identity, and print in the British American colonies and the early years of the republic. The social function of print, the conceptualization of authorship, and the subjects of representation changed significantly from Mary Rowlandson to Catharine Maria Sedgwick, and we will explore this change during the course of the semester. Our goal in this class will be not only to comprehend the literary origins of the United States, but also to grasp the significant relation of this literary history to the rise of the new "Republic of Letters" as a whole.

Required Texts:
Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God (ed. Neal Salisbury)
Cotton Mather, Selections from Cotton Mather online
Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and Other Writings
Thomas Paine, Common Sense
The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States
Washington Irving, The Sketch Book
Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Huntly
Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Hope Leslie
Michael Warner, The Letters of the Republic
Additional writings online

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ENGLISH 181
VOICES IN AMERICAN LITERARY REBELLION: DICKINSON, SINCLAIR, ELLISON, ALEXIE

Emory University
Fall 2001

"[T]he writing of this particular book was an act of social responsibility as well as an attempt at an artistic projection." Referring to his novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison here suggests that writing is much more than a solitary artistic endeavor. Like the other writers we will read in this course, Ellison believed writing to be a powerful act of expression and engagement, a way to grapple with horrifying circumstances threatening the future of his community and the nation. Throughout this course, we will examine how writers such as Ellison use literature as a form of rebellion and confrontation. Indeed, for many authors, the very act of writing was rebellion, an act that allowed their voices to be heard, an act that gave them freedom to confront social injustice and private persecution. By critically engaging with acts of literary rebellion, from Emily Dickinson's poetry to Sherman Alexie's short stories, we will better understand how writers use literature as a form of social revolt.

Since this is a composition course, we will our engagement with this literature to explore the process of expository writing, from the formation of a topic through final revisions of the essay. Much of our time will be devoted to your own writing and the manner in which your writing takes shape. By critically reading essays analyzing literary texts, we will also discuss the various methods professional and student writers use to develop their ideas into coherent and powerful essays. Our goal in this course is to create a better understanding of the qualities of expository writing through literary analysis.

REQUIRED TEXTS:
Andrea Lunsford and Robert Connors, The New St. Martin's Handbook
Emily Dickinson, Poems
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Eric Sundquist, ed. Cultural Contexts for Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man
Sherman Alexie, The Toughest Indian in the World
Essays and other texts on Reserve

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ENGLISH 181
TO TELL A TALE: LANGUAGE AND NARRATIVE POSSIBILITIES IN (NON)FICTIONAL AMERICAN TEXTS

Emory University
Fall 2000

COURSE DESCRIPTION: From the origins of authorship in America to the present time, writers have frequently postured their text as a depiction of true circumstances, even when the truth of their claims remains in doubt. Such works force us to reexamine the fiction/nonfiction dichotomy and the manner in which the author undermines this distinction. In this course, we will explore the narrative process of several texts that call into question their status as works of nonfiction. We will examine how writers as distinct as Harriet Jacobs and Gabriel Garcia Marquez define and direct the reading of their texts through narrative conventions traditionally associated with "true" stories. Through this critical analysis, we will be able to understand more clearly the narrative process and the way in which it directs our reading.


Since this is a composition course, we will also explore the process of expository writing, from the formation of a topic through final revisions of the essay. Much of our time will be devoted to your own writing and the manner in which your writing takes shape. By critically reading essays analyzing literary texts, we will also discuss the various methods professional and student writers use to develop their ideas into coherent and powerful essays. Our goal in this course is to create a better understanding of the qualities of expository writing through literary analysis.

REQUIRED TEXTS:
Andrea Lunsford and Robert Connors, The New St. Martin's Handbook
E. E. Cummings, i: six nonlectures
Francis La Flesche, The Middle Five
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
Essays and other texts on Reserve

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ENGLISH 181
DEMONS, WITCHES AND MADMEN: THE CHANGING GUISE OF EVIL IN THE AMERICAN IMAGINATION

Emory University
Spring 1999

COURSE DESCRIPTION: Throughout the history of USAmerican literature, authors have personified evil in various ways. These characters often challenge the status quo, threaten social harmony, or destroy a particular community. In this course, we will examine the changing guises of evil and the impact such characters have in various texts. Through our reading of texts from the Salem Witchcraft trials to the present, we will address the following questions throughout the course of the semester: How have the presentations of evil changed over time? Where do writers locate evil? How do these writers incorporate evil into their texts?

REQUIRED TEXTS:
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown and Other Tales
Andrea Lunsford and Robert Connors, The St. New Martin's Handbook
Arthur Miller, The Crucible
Toni Morrison, Beloved
Flannery O'Connor, 3 By Flannery O'Connor
Sylvia Plath and e. e. cummings, Poems on Reserve
Edgar Allan Poe, Selected Tales
Essays and other texts on Reserve
Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (recommended)

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ENGLISH 101
DIGITAL CULTURE, THE "INFORMATION AGE," AND CONTEMPORARY NARRATIVES OF IDENTITY

Emory University
Spring 2002

Course Description: We are living in what is commonly known as the "Information Age," but is this term adequate or even accurate? Do we define ourselves simply by access to, or dissemination of, "information"? How does what we know come to define who we are? Through writing assignments and class discussions, will examine these questions as we grapple with the processes involved in our own cultural formation. Throughout the semester, we will explore the ways in which technological advances and "revolutions" in knowledge production and transmission have shaped and been shaped by the narratives through which we come to understand ourselves. As the readings will demonstrate, "information" and "knowledge" are complex terms that are not so easily attributable to an era, and as we examine the forces at work within digital culture at the dawn of the twenty-first century, we will better understand who we are, as individuals and communities, and where exactly we may be going.

Required Texts:
Mark Dery, Escape Velocity
David Trend (ed.), Reading Digital Culture
Richard Powers, Plowing the Dark
Andrea Lunsford and Robert Connors, The New St. Martin's Handbook
Essays online and on Reserve

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ENGLISH 101
WRITING THE COMMUNITY/WRITING OURSELVES

Emory University
Fall 1998

COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this class, we will explore the process of expository writing, from the formation of a topic through final revisions of the essay. Most of the course will be devoted to your own writing and the manner in which your writing takes shape. By critically reading essays from a variety of disciplines, we will also discuss the various methods professional and student writers use to develop their ideas into coherent and powerful essays. Our goal in this course is to create a better understanding of the qualities of expository writing.

REQUIRED TEXTS:
Andrea Lunsford and Robert Connors, The St. New Martin's Handbook
Essays on reserve and in journals in Woodruff Library

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